8 Website Design Trends to Watch out for in 2016

When it comes to website design trends, one should always focus on achieving a great user experience.

This being said, in order to promote a business properly, one also needs to do their best to appeal to the masses as well. This is truly an art form. Managing to achieve a quality look, however, is unfortunately far from enough. A designer also needs to think in terms of functionality as well as in terms of hardware requirements. People with slower and older devices will also be joining in on the group of likely visitors.

In the age of the Internet, the number of innovations, when it comes to website design trends, is rapidly growing.

Each year it serves a plateful of new ideas and interesting designs. We have, therefore, outlined 8 trends to keep an eye on in the dawn of this year’s early bloom.

8 Website Design Trends in 2016

#1 Hero Video Headers and Backgrounds

The Internet has seen an increase in speed and an improvement in video plugin integration in the past couple of years. It is now easier for a growing number of websites to provide a movie-style experience. Check out these awesome examples of video headers and backgrounds to get the idea.

Everything is available, from small snippets to full-length preview videos. All of it can be seen on a huge number of modern websites, with images gleaming in high definition in all its sharpness and crispness which appeal to the international user.

#2 Interactions

The focus of website promotion has moved on to letting users interact with the actual website, thus making it lucrative and interesting to visitors. The way these interactions work is by creating links between users and devices by means of apps and mobile interfaces. Now you can even build an app without having any technical expertise.

Most good interactions, however are more often than not small and even micro. This is not to say, however that the size of these renders them worthless – users have been known to value these, no matter the size.

“How a user is interacting with the content thus far, what they’ve clicked on and how quickly, where they’re hesitating, their scroll speed, and even what they hover over but choose ‘not’ to click on will modify the site itself. It will constantly be responding to what it’s learned, essentially, and present different content or even change the structure altogether in an effort to engage that user longer.”

#3 Scrolling and vertical patterns

The growing popularity of smartphones is something we are all aware of. However, the predictions that the good old, old-school scrolling will go out of fashion have been proven quite wrong. Parallax scrolling is one of interesting types of scrolling technique, for example.

Scrolling as an interaction tool is currently just as important as mobile vertical patterns, which are based upon the fact that smaller screens tend to make users scroll more, dwindling on the appeal. To get a better idea of this new trend, take a look at some great Parallax scrolling examples.

#4 Illustrations

Although photos truly do work on websites of certain nature, it can easily be said that illustrations and sketches make for more appeal in general. The point of view that the mentioned are reserved mostly for children is quite an outdated one and more importantly, incorrect. When it comes to smaller pieces of website design, illustrations tend to make the feel to a site a tad more personal and warmer as well as cozier in general.

Here is what expert Liz Blazer has to say about this new trend: “Audiences have grown weary of flashy overly-rendered 3D CGI. The remedy: 3D/2D hybrids that aim for a more graphic, stylized, and illustrated look. When 3D CGI modeling and rendering are mixed at the right balance with 2D animated elements, a strange mix of dimensionality and flatness occur. That flatness can bring with it an earthy and familiar warmth that is poised to catch on in the year to come.“

#5 Blur

Technology in general has moved up in the world so much that the line between animation and reality has never been more blurred. Apparently, users are really into this type of customization, even when they know that imagery is not real. Even professionals at Facebook say claim that with the application of the blurring effect we can compress the image file to such extents that it actually optimizes page load time.

#6 Clipart

One website design trend that seems to have stuck for decades now is that of clipart. Early web design pioneers could not have guessed that this trend is going to survive for this long, let alone that it would still be here in 2016. Still, true artists know exactly how to use clipart to their advantage. If you have a ton of work to be done, this is a great way to do it more efficiently.

There are a lot of online clip art resources to choose from. After reading some of the available ICLIPART reviews, I found that this website is quite resourceful and generally excellent for any website designer.

#7 Slides

We have gone a long way since sliders on websites, initially designed so that users could move images within a frame to showcase content. Full-screen slides work by means of refreshing the entire screen with new content, with a click, scroll, or a timed effect. This trend has made the browsing experience seem almost physical and this is why it is expected that an increasing number of sites will be using this concept in the months to come.

#8 The 80s vibe

The current generation of Internet users seems to really dig the bolder, brighter design, that irradiates that feeling of the 80s. It is expected that 2016 will be a year of many colors and fonts, in contrast to the more monotonous 2015 designs.

Dribble for example, is swarming with colors. Even the big dogs such as Google in their Material Design documentation have succumbed to this cute, vibey trend. The modern world basically revolves around the Internet and people have always been prone to appreciating the beautiful.

Check out this piece at Canva’s blog to get the idea of the 80s style trend that is definitely making a strong comeback in 2016.

There are a lot of expectations when it comes to the year 2016. Technological trends however, are not quite as predictable as they might seem. This list includes most of those that can be predicted and with this in mind, make sure you keep a watchful eye on the aforementioned.

Marcus is an Australian IT support professional. He’s running his own business, working with companies that outsource their IT maintenance. He often writes about technology, business and marketing and is a regular contributor on several sites.